Energy cost of 'mining' bitcoin is more than twice that of gold

The amount of energy required to "mine" one dollar's worth of bitcoin is more than twice that required to mine the same value of copper, gold, or platinum, according to a new paper, suggesting that the virtual work that underpins bitcoin, ethereum, and similar projects is more similar to real mining than anyone intended.

One dollar's worth of bitcoin takes about 17 megajoules of energy to mine, according to researchers from the Oak Ridge Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, compared with four, five, and seven megajoules for copper, gold, and platinum.

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Other cryptocurrencies also fare poorly in comparison, the researchers write in the journal Nature Sustainability, ascribing a cost-per-dollar of 7MJ for ethereum and 14MJ for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency monero. But all the cryptocurrencies examined come off well compared with aluminium, which takes an astonishing 122MJ to mine one dollar's worth of ore. ...